puer aeternus
by betterthanbone
Summary: After the war, Lucy sits at the bar and thinks about everything she has been through. (Natsu, Lucy and Happy fight an evil wizard.)


After the war, Lucy sits at the bar and thinks about everything she has been through. Somehow, she has muddled through twenty years of her life without even her realising it, battling off demons and sorcerers who constantly reach for that bright but diaphanous prospect of magic. Lucy used to love magic. It was something warm for her to curl into on her colder nights, her whip and her keys right at her hip. Now, it's something alien. A weapon that erodes at the world under the grabby hands of thieves and thugs. Lucy wonders how she could have something so lethal jangling at her hips, then she thinks about her hands, every drop of blood spilled with each thrust of her keys.

"Yo, Luce."

Natsu comes bounding into the guild, Happy trailing behind him with a particularly slimy looking fish shoved into his mouth. They both wave at Lucy as she turns around and hops off the bar stool. Natsu's carrying a big basket that reeks of something foul.

"Shit, Natsu, what's in the basket?" Lucy turns her nose away from the suspicious basket. Out of the corner of her eye, Natsu rubs a hand sheepishly at the nape of his neck. A smear of dirt strikes through his cheek. His muffler is tied around his head to keep his brilliant shock of pink hair out of his eyes.

"We went fishing. Hey Luce, we found a job. Want to leave now?"

"Showering is against Natsu's moral principles," Happy supplements when Lucy looks at him oddly.

She hesitates before answering. "Hey... I have to run some errands. I don't think I'll be following you on this one."

Natsu's face immediately falls, his glittering eyes dim to a crestfallen shadow.

"What kind of errands, Lucy? Are you buying those raunchy adult novels again?" Happy rolls his tongue and tries making sexy sounds but he just sounds like a sputtering train, which is an impossible feat in itself, but when has Fairy Tail not managed to done the impossible? Rising from the dead, power packed into bleeding fists, a bloodied and bruised hand in the air saying: Everyone look! This is what our guild is made out of! This is Fairy Tail!

Resurrection is an unfailing cycle for them, even that they don't think twice before doing, as if it were a natural law of the universe: They die, and then emerge from the flames bright, if not brighter than before. Fairy Tail is a beautiful, beautiful disaster. So much disaster that they almost seem like a myth. Even the name of their guild sounds make-believe, something conjured in the mind of a bored kid, right from a fairy tale. Inwardly, Lucy finds herself drawn towards their ridiculous bravado and their single-tracked mind that always leads unfalteringly to victory, a path which they have walked many times, and are going to walk over and over again. Lucy realised this after she killed Hyouka, when she stared at the ghost of herself in the glass shell of an abstract science contraption, and saw her dirty, bloody face, and thought, _I'm like them too. I'm one of them._

"Shut up, Happy," she tells the cat. The annoyed expression on her face is admittedly half-assed, and maybe Natsu can see it crumbling down, because he asks again. "Come on, won't you come with us? Don't you need to pay your rent?"

"I forgot about my rent," Lucy suddenly says, stricken. The landlady came around her place yesterday to give her a stern dressing down about paying her rent on time. She shoves her wallet and her lipstick into her purse and follows Natsu. He doesn't wait for her to catch up, like he's sure she'll always follow them. Which is true, Lucy thinks. She wonders when this boy had such a hold on her heart. Maybe it is because that they have unconsciously entrusted each other with their hearts. Like the time when she stood alone in an arena, her opponent a towering shadow from where she was at the ground, and she felt a strong hand pick her up on her feet. Or when they were in a sinking ship suspended in midair, standing in front of an eternal being and Lucy felt like shriveling up and dying, because her keys were cracked and her fingers swollen, but Natsu stepped forward. When she jumped from a tower and he caught her in his arms. Or now, when they are going to fight a dark wizard together, a boy, a girl, a cat.

The dark wizard who's dressed like a bad magician laughs at them. Top hat, tuxedo, the whole deal. Lucy can almost imagine him pulling a colourful bouquet of flowers from his shirt sleeve. His red cape ripples ominously with his movements. They tried to sneak into his cave but Natsu, unfortunately, isn't well-suited for stealth and clandestine operation.

"You'll never get my magic powers and stuff!" The dark wizards laughs cruelly, but the message itself sounds a bit half-hearted.

Natsu, ever so tactful, jumps up and lights his fists in a fiery blaze. "Suck it!"

Somehow, Natsu's victory cry trumps the evil wizard's angsty and poetic one, and they brawl, a whirlwind of fire and unnecessarily loud shouts coming from Natsu, and a lot of dark feathers (feathers?) coming from the evil wizard. While Natsu fights it out with the evil wizard, Lucy goes over to the machine, punches in a few buttons, and the glow emitted from the giant crystal right in the centre dies down. Beside her, Happy looks at it in puzzlement.

"How did you know how to stop it? All the buttons look the same to me."

Lucy side-eyes him, wondering if he's teasing her. "Look, there are patterns on the button. It's actually braille. So I just typed in a command to the command centre and disabled it."

Happy's mouth forms an 'O'. "Since when does Lucy understand braille?"

"When I was young I used to sneak in to my father's library and I read a few books on Braille. It's the outcome of a super lonely and angsty childhood," Lucy says. Turning away from the machine, she rests her hip against the control panel and watches the fight. A square shape on the cave wall slides open and out of it pops a metallic hand that reaches grabbily for Natsu. She slings out one of her keys. There's a bright flash of light and the sudden appearance of a cow, who moos heartily and chops the metal hand cleanly in half.

"Moo," Taurus says, dressed in nothing but underwear.

"Hi," Lucy says.

"Lucy-san looks beautiful today."

"Damn right," Lucy says, makes a slashing motion with her key and he is gone.

When she turns back to the fight, the evil wizard is pinned against the ground. Happy hops over and gives him an obligatory fart in the face, and Natsu laughs and laughs and laughs, until the evil wizard tells him he's mean.

"Fart jokes, Natsu? Seriously?" Lucy comments as she walks over to them.

Natsu glances up at her advancing figure makes a mocking moue. "Lucy is being mean."

"Not mean," Lucy shakes her head. "just the only grown up person in this room."

"What about me?" the evil wizard asks from the floor.

"Your feathers were a bad choice."

He sighs. "I knew it."

Lucy turns to Natsu. "Well, let's collect our money. I've been eyeing this new dress in the shop lately..."

"And I have to buy this amazing chicken drumstick!"

Just then, Lucy feels the ground shake ominously. She turns to catch Natsu's gaze. He looks at her seriously.

The evil wizard sighs. "One of you must have activated the self-destruct button on the machine."

Lucy thinks back to when she leaned her hip against the control panel. "Oh, uh... it might have been me."

"Time to make a break for it then!" Natsu runs out of the cavern, dragging the evil wizard by the scuff of his shirt.

The cave explodes in a shower of molten rock and ash. They barely manage to avoid being crushed by the boulders. Coughing and caked in ash, Lucy tries to find her balance in the aftermath, kicking around loose rocks and dirt to find secure footing. Suddenly feeling a swell of annoyance, she strides over the the evil wizard who looks like a sugar roll when covered in ash and kicks him in the stomach.

"Of all the areas you could have chosen to create a destructive weapon, why did you have to choose a volcano?"

The wizard doesn't reply, just wheezes, which is good enough of an answer for Lucy.

"Alright, alright," Natsu says. "We need to get this guy back to the host. Are you mad, Lucy?"

"Not mad, just, my clothes," Lucy wails. "Am I going to ruin every single piece of clothing I have during missions? If this keeps up the only undamaged cloth I have will be a handkerchief."

"Just wear that then," Happy supplies helpfully, and Lucy hits him at the back of his head.

They have to walk all the way back even though there is an ocean to their immediate left because Aquarius is vacationing with her boyfriend in the spirit world. Sourly, Lucy wonders how a temperamental mermaid can have a better love life than her. They walk to the nearest train station in silence, the evil wizard following them glumly, emanating waves of thinly veiled bitter resentment. They give him up to the host at the next city, who gives them the stink eye so bad Lucy almost bursts out laughing. He looks like a sullen child who's just been ratted out on to his parents. Fresh green notes are slid over the pockmarked table to them. Lucy takes it thankfully and wishes the host well, a distinguished looking person who has a place in the government. She hands Natsu his share.

"How nice!" Lucy rubs the money all over her face, enjoying the rough texture of hopes and dreams and new dresses on her face. "What a big stack of money! And for such little work! That evil wizard was a sad creep."

"Huh," Natsu says, still woozy with carsickness from the train ride, childishly rubbing his eye with a fist. He still behaves like a child even though he's twenty already. What an infant, Lucy thinks tenderly. He's never outgrown the feeling of teenage invincibility, still behaves like someone who can afford to shout and laugh and do whatever they want. It's like he's been like that the whole of his life and doesn't know how to be anything else. He rings deep and true and clear, like a bell. Of course, she wants him to grow up. She's curious to know how this wild, reckless Natsu will translate into adulthood, but then, she never wants the Natsu of now to disappear. She wants him to stay as he is forever, in a fantastical pocket of eternal youth, giving his blinding smiles away freely, colouring the world an optimistic shade. Spouting some spiel about never giving up even if the odds are a skyscraper stacked against him. _Puer aeternus_. Eternal boy, child-god, forever young.

He gives her hope. He gives everyone in Fairy Tail hope. She hopes, someday, she'll be able to do the same too.

A wave of fondness crashes into her in a sparkling wave and strikes her with surprise for one, brief moment.

Happy's jabbering on about buying all kinds of fish from the market, even the really big one with red stripes that's just been imported all the way from some exotic sounding country.

"Come on, then," Lucy says. "Let's catch the train back home."

"Ugh, not again," Natsu groans.

The whistle of the train pierces through the air and the three of them board, a boy, a girl, a cat.

The journey home, Lucy looks out the window at the smooth rolling planes of grass and the sky that hangs above them glowering and endless. Next to her, Natsu's lying down on his side, clutching at his stomach with his eyes squeezed firmly shut. A light sheen of sweat covers his pale face. She is imbued by a strange urge to push his hair out of his face. She also wanted to see what it would feel like to run her fingers through his rose hair, not that it had anything to do with her own personal feelings, _of course_ , it was for _science_ , if pink hair has a different texture from blonde hair - ah, who was she kidding? Happy's squeezed on same seat (the train was unusually packed so they all had to squeeze into one seat), staring into space, probably still fantasizing about fish.

She turns back to the window. Maybe tomorrow. Besides: for them, there is always a tomorrow.


End file.
